


Normal

by frozenCinders



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, rocky road trio, uncle braig cinematic universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 12:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18699748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozenCinders/pseuds/frozenCinders
Summary: Between Vanitas constantly picking fights with strangers to prove he's strong and thus worth keeping alive and Ienzo clamming up about almost anything but science, Braig has had it up to here with these kids.He's going to make them experience normal childhoods if it kills him.





	Normal

It's rare for Vanitas to actually get hurt, but he comes home with a bloody nose today. He skulks past Braig to retrieve a bunch of tissues and remains silent when he comes back to sit on the couch aside from a heavy, annoyed sigh.

"Let me guess, I should see the other guy?"

Vanitas scoffs at that, but he smiles.

"So you're not gonna tell me what happened," Braig figures after a minute of silence.

"I won. What's there to talk about?"

"What there is is that you don't need to be going around fighting people for no reason. Especially if you're gonna be this clumsy," he scolds, already knowing Vanitas would recoil slightly at that. He's a difficult kid to get through to, so Braig has to stick with what he knows will get a reaction out of him. Not like he has any luck with Ienzo, after all.

Speaking of Ienzo, he disappeared into the kitchen a while ago. Braig figured at the time that he was grabbing a snack, but unless he's just sitting on the floor in there while he eats, Braig has no clue what he's doing. He goes to check on him and whatever sleep was still lingering in him is knocked out quicker than any coffee could manage at what he sees.

"Woah, hey!" he shouts, sprinting to Ienzo and yanking the bottles out of his hands and letting them clatter to the ground as Braig picks him up and drags him away from the pot he was mixing in.

"Didn't Even teach you not to just go around mixing chemicals?! Jesus, kid!"

"Learn by doing," Ienzo says.

"As if! Learn by doing your fu-- ugh, your _research,_  Ienzo! Did you even look at the-- wait, how good is your reading comprehension at that age, anyway? Reading the bottles might not've even done any good."

He sets Ienzo down in the doorway and points at that spot, expecting him to stay in place as he checks the bottles to see what they are. Thankfully, there was no bleach or anything involved, but even if he was just mixing hand soap with dish soap, he really needs to learn that he can't do that sort of thing at home. In a lab with Even there to know shit and deck him out in all kinds of safety equipment, sure, but not here.

Braig cleans the pot out and sets it aside to dry, watching Vanitas lead Ienzo into the other room by his hand out of the corner of his eye. He half-expects to find them killing each other or something when he pokes his head into the living room, but he luckily just sees Ienzo wiping at the dried blood on Vanitas's face.

"Here, kid, let's get you washed up," Braig says, taking him back into the kitchen by his arm and soaking a washcloth in warm water. Vanitas pulls a face when Braig starts scrubbing the blood off of him, but he stubbornly keeps quiet.

"If you actually went to school, I bet I'd be getting calls every day about how you got sent to the office _again,_ " Braig complains, rinsing the washcloth and ringing it out in just enough time for Vanitas to sneak away again. "Fuck, where'd you go now?"

"Drying my face since you got me all wet, do you mind?" Vanitas remarks with a dry towel against his face.

Braig just runs a hand down his face. Suddenly, he's tired again.

"Right, I'll be back in a sec. Watch Ienzo," he says before leaving. He has a few things to pick up.

* * *

"What's that?" Vanitas asks as a thin book is dropped onto the coffee table. Ienzo sifts through it for a moment but apparently doesn't find anything interesting in it. Braig places a box of crayons next to it.

"It's a coloring book. Normal kid stuff."

Vanitas must just assume it's for Ienzo, because he doesn't react at all, just continues playing whatever it is he's gotten into recently. Braig glances at the screen and immediately sees some horrifying monster and excessive gore.

"Alright, that's enough," he says, sitting on the couch and covering Ienzo's eyes. "Hit a save point and quit for now. You're doing _normal kid stuff_  today, alright? Both of you."

Vanitas snorts when he sees what Braig is doing.

"What, is Resident Evil not kid appropriate?" he jokes, but he finds a safe room to turn the game off anyway.

Braig figures he should show Ienzo how crayons work just in case he doesn't have experience with them, but he didn't expect _both_  of them to be surprised by them. Vanitas picks up an orange one and starts drawing circles in the corner of a page to test it out. It's both endearing and a little concerning how fascinated he is by a crayon, of all things.

Vanitas puts on a purposely obnoxious pretense of only doing this because Braig is "making" him, but they both manage to pick out pages and start coloring them in, like normal children.

Ienzo keeps deferring to the cover to make sure all the colors match as perfectly as possible, coloring neatly and carefully. Vanitas, on the other hand, seems to be making his picture as chaotic as possible. When he gets bored of one color, he'll set it down and start using a different one partway through. This results in a very unique looking cat with about 12 different colors on it. Ienzo's picture is of a normal brown mouse leaning on a giant piece of orange cheese.

When they're done, they both have their own ways of showing Braig. Ienzo holds the open book up, hiding half of his face behind it and just leaving one innocent little eye to express with. Vanitas just tosses his page in Braig's general direction like he doesn't care whether it reaches him or not.

"Well, can't lose it, now, can we?" Braig says as he swipes the page off the floor and makes way to the kitchen.

"Wait, what? The other one is funny, but don't put that one up," Vanitas protests, actually jumping off the couch to stop Braig from putting it on the fridge alongside the first drawing Vanitas ever showed him.

"Ienzo, you want yours up here too, or do you wanna keep it in the book?" Braig calls, ignoring Vanitas.

"I said don't."

He makes a grab for the page but misses as Braig holds it away, and he quickly gives up. Ienzo walks in with his picture still displaying. He looks down at it for a moment like he's deciding and eventually closes the book. Braig figures that's his answer.

"Fine, but I better get some kind of drawing out of you, kid. Gotta decorate this thing," Braig says, tapping the mostly bare surface of the fridge for emphasis. Ienzo doesn't look like he understands.

About a week later, Ienzo comes up to Braig and flips through the book, showing him that all the pages have been colored in. They were obviously mostly done by Ienzo, but a few of them were clearly by Vanitas. He hands the book to Braig now that it's finished and wanders off, probably to go find Vanitas and get escorted to the castle, since Vanitas always gets peeved when Braig walks Ienzo back instead of him.

It's not like a coloring book somehow magically fixed their childhoods, but it's something normal and fun that they got to do together. It's a start.

**Author's Note:**

> it was a tom and jerry coloring book


End file.
